


Ties that Bind

by brothebro



Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Beta Read, Gen, Geralt grows some vines that's all, Hurt Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia, Hurt/Comfort, Implied Murder, Kaer Morhen, Made up lore, Magical Bond, POV Outsider, Symbiotic Relationship, Temporary Character Death, Wounds, Young Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia, canon typical language, like a super power, lore what lore, non explicitly described body modification, symbiote au, trials of the grasses
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-08
Updated: 2021-01-08
Packaged: 2021-03-13 08:28:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,993
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28525485
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brothebro/pseuds/brothebro
Summary: In Ash’s long life they’ve never wandered far away from their tether, their tree. They should be able to do this, damn it. Time is of the essence. Little Geralt might not have many hours left in this world. And then- then Eskel will be all alone, left to whatever plans the masters of the keep have prepared for him. Ash can’t let that happen, they’ve been impassive and oblivious to the atrocities committed, within these tall stone walls that surround them, for far too long.They have to- they have to reach the lower chambers.A child’s scream echoes.They don’t have long. They have to- They have to leave the tree behind.Or: The symbiote AU no-one asked for but I wrote anyway
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia & Original Witcher Character
Comments: 28
Kudos: 39
Collections: The Witcher Quick Fic #03





	Ties that Bind

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Quickfic challenge  
> Big thanks to my beta reader Lafayette<3  
> enjoy!

Ash feels the gentle breeze rustling their leaves, their roots spreading deeper in the ground, reaching and breaking through the paved corridor that surrounds the small courtyard they were born in.

Since Ash was a little sapling they’ve lived surrounded by tall stone walls, trying to grow their branches high to the sky where they could reach the sun. They’ve seen boys play by their trunk, laughing and chattering away, climbing Ash’s branches and swinging by their arms, contesting who will jump the furthest away. Ash has seen those same boys become men – hardened warriors with cat-like eyes – and has seen those men telling off the next generation of boys when they get as reckless as the men would when they were the boys’ age.

It’s all so amusing to Ash. They enjoy the company.

Even when winter comes and they have to shed their leaves, painting the soft earth with their orange and brown colours, preparing for sleep till spring wakes them up again, even then they are never truly alone. The boys still visit, playing in the heaps of dried leaves, or laughing as they throw snowballs on one another later in the freezing season.

But every few years when the current group of boys reach a certain age they are taken somewhere Ash doesn’t know, and at that night the chaos that seeps beneath the old stone keep slithers within Ash’s roots. It’s not the same sort of magic that runs through Ash’s veins. It’s dark and painful and just-

_Wrong._

Then, when the night is done and Ash feels like they can breathe again, no boys full of laughter and youth return to play by them. For weeks Ash is all alone in their too-small courtyard, waiting patiently for the joyful company of the children to return.

Yet, those few boys that do return are always devoid of their happiness, the light on their eyes snuffed, defeated. They are husks of their former selves, talking in hushed voices, crying beneath the thick canopy of Ash’s tree.

It worries them to no end to see them like this.

They know that new boys will eventually find their home in the ancient keep, will find Ash’s courtyard and play beneath their leaves.

And yet the thought that something happens to those merry bands of boys, something that irreparably breaks them, has Ash wondering if there’s something they can do to prevent this tragedy.

_Maybe if they could wander inside the halls. If they could separate themself from their tree…_

It's not easy leaving their tree. After so many seasons tied to its bark, the gentle leaves, the deep rich roots, Ash feels drawn to, magnetised by it. They know they could hypothetically move in a radius of several meters if they tried. Chaos runs strong enough in their spirit to manage this.

From the whispers they've heard from the boys a _trial_ is soon to happen again. Ash has to leave their tree, see with their own eyes what happens in those trials that make most of the boys not return to their trunk, that makes them hollow echoes of the boundless joy they used to have.

So Ash tests the waters, leaves their wooden body little by little, pace by pace. It’s not enough, never enough, to reach the inner rooms of the keep, to find their way in those locked chambers that stink of wrongness and chaos.

-

Ash wasn’t quick in their endeavour to separate themselves from their body. A night of screams and pain and _wrongwrongwrong_ happens again and they are left alone, wallowing in regret and loneliness.

They don’t know how much time passes until they see two of the twenty boys again.

“It’s unfair,” one of the boys, a red-head with eyes that used to be as green as Ash’s new leaves, weeps curled up against their rough bark. “They are all dead; Markus, Dietrich, Zan, everyone. _Everyone_ , Eskel.”

“I know, Geralt,” Eskel chokes on a sob, hugging his friend, “I know. It’s just us two left. Just us two.”

“Three out of ten survive,” a humourless laugh leaves Geralt’s throat, his salty tears hitting Ash’s exposed roots, “Bullshit.”

If Ash were capable of crying, they would cry until their tears ran out, until the whole world heard their pleas to stop this madness.

So many years and they never guessed – they didn’t know what happened to the boys that didn't return. So many years lost when they could have tried to put a stop to it.

“Geralt!” A voice Ash places as one of the older men, one of the instructors, echoes down the half-exposed hallway that leads to the small courtyard.

Geralt wipes his tears on his tunic’s sleeve, and with faux confidence marches towards the man.

“Congratulations! The mages think you’re an excellent candidate for extra trials,” the man says and Ash’s soul sinks, “Tonight you’ll come with us.”

-

In Ash’s long life they’ve never wandered far away from their tether, their tree. They should be able to do this, damn it. Time is of the essence. Little Geralt might not have many hours left in this world. And then- then Eskel will be all alone, left to whatever plans the masters of the keep have prepared for him. Ash can’t let that happen, they’ve been impassive and oblivious to the atrocities committed, within these tall stone walls that surround them, for far too long.

They have to- they have to reach the lower chambers.

A child’s scream echoes.

They don’t have long. They have to- They have to leave the tree behind.

Ash detaches themself from the tall branches and luscious foliage and tangles themself within the corrupted chaos that reaches their roots, pushing and pushing to the very edge of their wooden appendages. Pushing as far as they can go, hoping that they’ll reach the cries for help before it’s too late. Before the damage is permanent.

They reach and reach and struggle but eventually, they make it. They are at the very edge of their roots and they gather all their power and push through until they feel the magnetising pull of their body calling them back.

They shut off this urge, this feeling to turn back, to hide within their sturdy trunk, and they continue forward, passing through the wet earth, into the ancient stones. Deep. Deeper into the ground. They are so close to where the trials are held. They can feel it.

They make it to a room where the boy – Geralt – is strapped onto a metal table, screaming his lungs off as several cloaked figures administer vile concoctions into his bloodstream. Ash feels the pain of the boy, with every thrash, with every ragged, strangled breath, with every ever slowing heartbeat.

They rush forward as the boy heaves his last breath, his little heart going still as stone.

_Nonononononononononono!_

This can’t be the end. They can’t have failed the boy – not after all the boys that came before him and disappeared right under Ash’s watch.

Without a second thought, they bring forth their spirit form, the pure chaos that creates them, in Geralt’s still heart.

At first, there is nothing. They are nothing, floating into a starless void with no goal in sight.

But then, the steady beating of a drum – no, of a heart – leads them to a starlit valley of silver grass where pure chaos thrums and dances, flickers with so much life Ash feels like drowning.

There, in the middle of the silver valley, a tree so similar to Ash’s own and yet so different stands tall, branches gnarled and extending upwards, as though reaching to caress the stars.

A girl with moonlit hair walks towards the tree, entranced, and so does a woman of raven locks and lilac eyes. And there, right next to the great tree, a man with hair as silver as the valley and eyes bright like the summer sun waits for them, a small smile painted on his lips.

The scenery changes abruptly, and Ash finds themselves in their small courtyard. It’s their home, they know this in their soul, in every fragment of their chaos, but it’s off somehow.

The courtyard is barren, the familiar trunk of their tree missing, and with it the fallen leaves and unearthed roots.

“I’m sorry Ash, I really am,” a familiar and long-forgotten voice says, and they see the shadow of a face leaning close to them. A searing pain blooms from their… body? No, from the spot where once their heart lied. “Your sacrifice will not be in vain, I promise you this, dear friend.”

Ash feels their body fall to the ground, their vision blurring, darkening, leaving them by the second.

-

Ash flutters their eyelids open, and their gaze meets the dark stone ceiling of the keep. A breath heaves and they realise that it’s coming from them, from the body they’re attached to.

 _How strange._ Their tree doesn’t make such noises. Their tree doesn’t feel every sound hurting its body, disorienting them.

“I made it,” Geralt’s voice echoes and reverberates around them, but Ash can’t see him, they can only hear him. It’s as if-

 _“I did it! Gods, I did it!”_ Ash cries. They managed to save Geralt. They finally did something right, something good.

“Who’s speaking?” Geralt says, his voice rough and hurting, and looks around. How strange is it for Ash to see the world through human eyes again!

 _“I’m Ash,”_ they say, _, “I think I bound myself to you, trying to save your life. I- I used to be bound to the tree. In the courtyard,”_ they explain, and feel Geralt’s head tilt in question.

“A wraith?” the boy asks.

_“A spirit. Probably. I’m not sure, it’s all foggy in here, I’m afraid. I probably, maybe, used to be human. I don’t know.”_

“Poor boy must be still hallucinating. Talking to himself like that,” a shrill voice, Geralt’s mind recognises as Ria the mage, head of the trials in Kaer Morhen, says.

“His heart stopped for a bit,” Another voice says – Rennes, master of the School of the Wolf, “Make sure he’s got no frailty left. We need him strong for training on the morrow.”

“On it.”

 _“They can’t hear me but they can hear you. I see… We’ll talk later, Geralt,”_ Ash says, _“When we’re alone, away from prying eyes and ears,”_

-

It takes Geralt several days to recover his strength, to adjust himself to his incredibly acute senses. He talks to Eskel and Vesemir about the second trial, and all the searing pain that it entailed. Of feeling like burning and being ripped apart simultaneously. Of leaving his last breath on the cold metal table. He also talks about Ash.

“I’m so glad you’re alive,” is Eskel’s only response. Well, that and a lung-crushing hug that fills them with warmth.

“There are no such things as tree spirits,” Vesemir says, lips pressed into a thin line, “But I’m glad you’re fine, pup.”

Ash finds out, when Geralt is healed and stable and they try to return to their tree, that they can’t leave Geralt’s body, for their chaos is tied to him, and as long as Geralt lives and breathes they’ll always be by his side. And if they do somehow leave his body will crumble in an instance, like it should have before they decided to save his life.

‘Something like a parasite’, Geralt calls Ash. But there is no bite or bitterness in his voice, none of the bad connotations the word has. A symbiotic relationship; that’s what this is.

Ash is fine with it and so is Geralt.

It’s an adjustment at first, sure, but given enough time they find their balance with each other.

There are many changes, for both of them, for better or worse. Maybe it’s the time Ash spent as a tree, maybe it’s something that followed them from their life as a person (they’re still not quite sure if they were human, elf or dwarf, or something else entirely) but they find out they need to bask in the sun – like a plant– often to feel strong, to feel the thrum of chaos buzzing through their shared body.

As for Geralt, his once red locks start growing white – the colour of Ash’s flowers – and he mourns the loss of yet another piece of his humanity, of becoming more recognisable as something other, something _strange._. Ash tries their best to reassure him that it’s going to be alright, that he is still, very much _human_ , very much the same young boy that played in Ash’s little courtyard for so many seasons. (They are never sure that they manage to convince him of that, but hell if they didn’t try).

Ash has no control over Geralt’s body, only over his chaos. But that’s for the better, they reckon – it’s one thing to control a barely sentient being like the tree and a whole other, a living, breathing human. (Witcher, Geralt corrects them. They’re a witcher, a mutant, an experiment.)

-

Seasons come and go and Geralt grows close to graduating, to setting off to the Path. There’s this buzz of excitement when he speaks to Eskel in hushed voices, planning all sorts of (sightseeing) trips and adventures. Ash shares the excitement with the young witchers, the prospect of leaving the old keep behind and seeing the world through Geralt’s eyes filling them with energy.

“Where do you want to go?” Geralt asks them at the crack of dawn one day, as he’s saddling his mare, a beautiful chestnut he calls Roach, getting her ready for the trip to come.

A flash of a memory, a silver field and silver tree comes to Ash’s mind. They are sure now that this vision? Prophesy? Has to do with the young witcher.

“I don’t think this place is real,” Geralt says, knitting his eyebrows together in thought.

 _“I feel like you’ll be happy when we get there,”_ Ash retaliates, projecting raven and lilac, ashen and emerald, directly to Geralt.

“Maybe,” Geralt, “Maybe we’ll stumble onto this place one day. For now, let’s see where the road will take us.”

_“Sounds like a good plan.”_

-

Life on the Path isn’t easy. More often than not they find themselves getting stifled on payments and getting thrown out of inns and taverns, toughing it out in the cold and the rain instead.

It isn’t easy, but at least they have each other for company.

The Continent is a beautiful place, despite what Geralt says; bogs and marshes, mountains and rivers, monsters and all. Ash enjoys the freedom the Path offers, the sights, the smells and tastes.

Sometimes they miss their little courtyard and their tree, feeling the pull to return, curl up by its side. But they know they can’t return when the first five years in the Path are not yet over. It’s a tradition Geralt and Ash must uphold.

-

Geralt is really good at his job, if Ash must say so. In the last three years, he’s slain quite a number of monsters, saving countless human lives in the process. He’s skilful with the blades and swift on his foot, his magic equally strong. He usually makes it out of a fight without a single scratch.

Usually.

They’ve taken a contract on a kikimora somewhere deep in the marshes of Velen, where the sun rarely shines. Geralt’s tracking it down, through muddy water and overgrown marshland trees, when the earth shakes and long dark spindly legs come crashing towards them from – seemingly– everywhere.

Geralt dodges and turns and dances around the barrage of attacks, but they are too many and too quick and he’s starting to tire.

A growl echoes from behind them, signalling the arrival of another enemy. A water hag, if Ash had to guess.

“Fuck,” Geralt curses as he dodges another attempt from the kikimora to skewer him, trying to find a weak spot on its exoskeleton to puncture with his silver sword.

 _“Geralt there’s a water-hag behind us!”_ Ash urges, feeling the monster approaching, preparing to launch its own attack.

“I know!” Geralt growls, “Fuck, Ash, I know. Do somethi-” he tries to say, only to get cut off by another blow from the kikimora.

Fuck, they have to do something, _anything_ , to get them both out of this spot.

Ash thinks of their tree and their branches, the ease with which they grew and tangled and kept the many residents of their tree safe. The chaos that was thrumming, alive, so alive in their leafy veins.

They think of how much they want to protect Geralt, their friend and companion.

They think of all this and extend, branch out, extend further.

“H-how?” Geralt’s question echoes across the now dead-still bog, his sword lodged in the kikimora’s disgusting head. Geralt turns to look over his back, where long sharp branches have sprouted, meeting the limp body of the water-hag.

 _“Wait. One moment. There,”_ Ash gathers their chaos back in themself and with it, the branches disappear too. _“I didn’t know I could do that, to be honest._

“You’re full of surprises,” a chuckle escapes Geralt’s throat.

_“I got your back, Ger. Wink.”_

“You didn’t just say _‘wink’_.”

_“How else am I supposed to emote to you, my friend?”_

“Fair enough.”

-

They are on their fourth-year mark on the Path when Ash feels the pull to return to Kaer Morhen stronger than ever. There is something very wrong back home; they can feel it in the air, on the earth that surrounds them, in the chaos that forms the world.

 _“We need to get our asses back home,”_ Ash says to Geralt.

“We can’t go back just yet. You know that Ash,” Geralt frowns.

_“Fuck the rules, Ger. I’m telling you, it’s important.”_

“What’s wrong?”

_“I don’t know, but I know something fucking is.”_

“Ash.”

_“What, Geralt? You think I’m telling you this because I’ve missed the bloody mountains? The creepy old keep and the death that seeps deep into the ground? I’m offended, my friend. And I’m rolling my proverbial eyes at you, I’ll have you know.”_

“You’re being dramatic, Ash.”

 _“No, not really,”_ they contemplate their next words, _“Let’s keep to the northern kingdoms at least, and let’s send a letter to Vesemir to see if everything is truly as well as you believe it to be.”_

“Alright, why not?”

__-_ _

Vesemir reassures them that everything is fine in the keep of the Wolves. Yet, Ash is sure that there’s something terribly off. Something that the witchers may not have noticed. They manage to convince Geralt to stay relatively close to Kaedwen and the Blue Mountains, just in case.

It’s not long before the wrongness becomes so much that they feel like drowning in it.

It’s not long before it feels so close to them it scares them shitless.

“Hmm,” Geralt hums in thought, examining his legs, finding deep blue and green bruises where unblemished skin was only hours prior, “that’s odd.”

He slathers a generous amount of soothing medicinal paste on the bruised spots and forgoes walking for the rest of the day.

As the day turns into night, Geralt grows weaker. The bruises are now bleeding wounds around his arms and legs.

“What’s happening, Ash? What is this?” he asks, unable to mask the worry and pain in his voice.

_“I wish I knew, Ger. We need to get to Kaer Morhen.”_

The witcher hums in agreement, trying desperately to staunch the bleeding. Ash wraps branches and vines around their wounds, the pain reaching them in hot waves.

Maybe this will help until they make it back. Until they fix this wrongness.

It helps that they are in Kaedwen, two or three days’ ride away from the keep. If they push poor Roach to her limit they might make it before- They don’t want to think what will happen if they are too late.

So they ride and ride, the trek long and arduous, Geralt growing weaker as more cuts and bruises form on his bloodied body. It hurts so much. It’s unbearable at times.

Ash, too, feels their strength diminishing, their power getting sapped as time crawls on. What little chaos they have left they use to guide Roach in the right direction, and to wrap vines and leaves over Geralt’s wounds as makeshift bandages.

Whatever is happening in the keep has them both at the brink of death.

They are so close, they can see the tall walls of Kaer Morhen in the distance, they can feel the pull of the keep – no, of their tree – getting stronger, when Geralt falls unconscious, his breathing ragged like it was that day in the trials, his heartbeat slower than ever.

Fuck they are so close. This can’t be the end.

 _“Please, someone help us!”_ Ash cries even though they know only Geralt can hear them. _“Please!”_

They muster whatever slivers of chaos they have left to command their branches to usher Roach into a gallop. The girl is tired – impossibly so – from days of travelling non-stop and it’s a fucking miracle, really, that she hasn’t dropped dead yet.

It seems like aeons pass until the familiar figure of the fighting instructor – of Vesemir – comes running through the gate, eyes wide with shock and worry when he notices Geralt’s limp form, wrapped in a cocoon of vines, leaves and branches.

 _“Take us to the tree Vesemir,”_ Ash says, but the instructor can’t hear them, and instead tries to cut the branches around Geralt’s wounds and Ash cries silently in pain. _“Pleasepleaseplease we’lldieVesemir-please,”_ they chant again and again as Vesemir cuts and slashes and wounds them further.

“Don’t cut us, Ves,” Geralt’s mouth moves even though he’s still unconscious, “Take us to our tree. Our tree. Please.”

-

“Unbelievable,” Rennes gasps.

“Told you we shouldn’t fucking cut the tree,” Vesemir grunts, “Told you it wasn’t a legend.”

“How the fuck should I have known that the tree tied itself to the boy! Besides we all saw the tree wither and die, keeping it would have led to disaster sooner or later.”

“This look dead to you, now?”

“Obviously not.”

Geralt eyes flutter open, cradled in an embrace of branches in full bloom. “What happened, Ash?” he asks, voice thick with sleep. Looking around the small courtyard he's met with lush, blooming branches wherever his gaze falls.

 _“They almost accidentally killed us, by trying to cut the tree,”_ Ash laughs humourlessly.

“Hmm. Help me get down.”

 _“Sure,”_ Ash responds, commanding their chaos to spout vines from Geralt’s arms, tethering them to the tree and growing them until he gets down safely.

“By the gods,” Rennes breathes out.

“Touch our tree again and we’ll collapse the keep,” Geralt says, and Rennes shakes his head, golden eyes wide with fear. “Good.”

Geralt turns to Vesemir next, “Sorry we gave you a fright, Ves.”

Vesemir chuckles, “Should have believed you when you told me of Ash – was it? – the first time. I’m glad you’re fine, pup.”

“Likewise. Now, we’re not supposed to return till next winter, and we’ve promised to meet Esk in Kovir in a fortnight. Ash and I should be going.”

“At least let your poor horse rest for a couple of days, Geralt.”

 _“Ves’s, got a point,”_ Ash chimes, _“And I don’t know about you but I could sleep for a day or two.”_

Geralt snorts a laugh and rolls his eyes, “You don’t sleep, Ash.”

_“Hush, you.”_

“Alright, I suppose two days hardly make a difference,” Geralt relents and Vesemir smiles.

They have a lot of mysteries left to discover and unravel concerning their symbiotic relationship -- Ash has no illusions that all will magically be perfect from now on-- but it’s something they’ll do together and at their own pace. For now, they are content with the relative safety they provide to one another, with their companionship and friendship, and with the allies they make throughout their Path.

**Author's Note:**

> There might be a continuation of this if the stars align and I get inspired. There's more to the story and the past of Ash I'd like to explore.  
> Hope you enjoyed this read :)


End file.
